WordPress Plugin Review: Category Grid View Gallery

When I find a plugin that kicks butt, I want to share it with everyone.

I’ve been searching everywhere for a quality WordPress plugin that allowed me to integrate a dynamic portfolio page within this blog. With the popularity of our infographic category – there had to be more of an effective means of displaying them for our readers, instead of just one at a time.

Enter Category Grid View Gallery. This plugin generates a grid view of the first images grabbed from posts of a category and displays the image and titles using a shortcode.

Since it’s based off of shortcodes, the extensibility is incredible. You can determine the size of the image displayed, the quantity of images displayed, if you want lightbox integration, you even have the flexibility to display your portfolio in a post or on a page.

To be honest – when I first saw this plugin, I immediately thought of the Jay-Z site Life + Times. You can essentially build a similar site to that, with the active and inactive tiles using this plugin – that’s how powerful this thing is.

Jay-Z | Life + Times

The plugin is available in the WordPress Plugin Directory and was updated as recent as 7/6/2011 – that’s a good thing with the new restrictions that are soon to be implemented within the Directory from Automattic for “stale” themes and plugins being hidden from view.

Checking the author’s main blog it appears as though they are actively developing the plugin and very much on top of user comments and suggestions – another good thing.

I definitely recommend this plugin if you’re in need of this type of functionality.

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James is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of HicksNewMedia, a Digital Publishing and Technology Consulting team providing effective and relevant solutions to individuals and businesses looking to more effective utilize the social interweb. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.